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Prost did turn in early, or simply slammed the door shut. Or both; turns in early to close the door, according to the racing etiquette of the day. It wouldn't have looked very pretty, but the corner was his, as Ramirez confirms.

I can only agree to a certain degree. Ramirez gives further weight to the idea that Senna was too fast to take the corner; confirming Prost's judgement.

What Ramirez doesn't say, is how Prost was supposed to react differently. In other words, Ramirez explains how Senna's "yield or accept a crash" overtaking worked.
With the chicane as tight as it was then, how on earth was Prost supposed to retain or regain the lead? You can rule out a simple switchback, the chicane didn't allow for it, unless Senna cleanly overshot the chicane, and before Prost had to turn in behind him - one of the prime reasons for disliking chicanes on a race track in the first place.
The very essence of a dive bomb attack is that the outcome is always negative for the one being attacked; a loss of position even if the corner was his, or a crash.

I would like to read whatever Ramirez has said beyond the small quote I found on the subject. Perhaps he explained further in his own memoirs, I don't know. But the essence of what he said in the quote I found, is first and foremost that Prost's judgement in the cockpit, of Senna's speed and distance was correct.

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Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

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Ramirez very clearly states Prost should not have closed the door on Senna.

Which he shouldn't have seeing as he did it way too late. You can't close a door on someone who is 3/4 of the way through or you will break there nose.

He does. It's implied: i.e. should have left him, not closed the door implies that Prost should have backed off. I think it's pretty clear

This whole paragraph has the whiff of being more than a bit upset about Senna's overtaking style. If Prost had no legitimate answer for Senna throwing it up the inside like that, then he should have just held up his hands to a great overtake and lived to fight another day (corner). If Senna was carrying too much speed as has been greatly speculated, he would have been leading by the end of the lap anyway.

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Senna, on appeal, was indeed given a punishment for his overtaking style.
I find your conclusion rather amusing. Ramirez confirms that Senna was going too fast, so he couldn't make a great overtake. He could only get past Prost, if Prost got out of the way, and then block Prost one way or another, while he (Senna) was sorting himself out. In fact, sorting himself out might have been enough to block Prost from making a switchback, but that is not overtaking.

My question for Ramirez remains; it is one thing to tell Prost he should not have closed the door on Senna. Quite another to explain what he should have done to retain first place; which was rightly his.
In 1988 Senna lost a victory because of a tangle in a Monza chicane. And that driver was trying to avoid him! I know Schlesser wasn't Prost, but the Suzuka chicane was incredibly tight.

As for Senna overtaking anyway because he was quicker; that is not a given. Prost had had a Gurney flap taken off the car, just before the start. That meant higher speed on straights, lower downforce for the corners. That is why Prost knew Senna would have to make a desperate attempt at the chicane or turn 1.
Prost wasn't interested in pole position just for the sake of it; he worked on the race set-up of his car throughout the weekend, including the Sunday morning warm-up and even the few laps the cars could do between the opening of the pitlane and forming up on the grid. Whether there was time enough for Senna to copy Prost's car change, I don't know. But it made for a substantial difference between the two cars, and determined the outcome of the race.

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Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

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All Prost had to do was not deliberately turn into another car. If you can oly retain your position by cheating then you've lost the position. I hardly think "Senna would have overtaken otherwise" can be used as a defence for causing a crash.

There are two possible outcomes. Senna makes the corner or not. If he can make the corner it's a good pass if he can't (as you insist) Prost stays ahead and Senna loses time and probably damages his car.

Politics at the time, especially when these 2 were involved were all kinds of fun, as you well know.



That's up there with some of the best obfuscation i've ever read on here, if Senna gets ahead of Prost, and makes the corner, it's an overtake wether or not it holds up to whatever imaginary standard you are attempting to compare this to.



This says it all about your inherent bias on the issue really, how can first place be 'rightfully' Prost's if the only way he could retain it was to turn in on Senna, causing an accident?



And this is relevant how?



Thats a lot of dancing around the real point here, if Prost doesn't turn in, there is no accident. Then either Senna makes the corner, and regardless of what you'd like to believe, would have been a good overtake, or Senna doesn't make the corner, and Prost carries on in first while Senna at least loses time off the track, or comes off worse after a trip across the chicane.

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You know me well enough to know I agree. But simply stating that doesn't solve the conundrum. How do you defend against a dive bomb, when one of the drivers throws the rules and racing etiquette to the wind? It then becomes a test of whether the one who dishes it out, can also take it or not. It seemed that Senna was less able to do the latter.

It is not I who insists that Senna couldn't make the corner, it was his then team coordinator Ramirez who says he was going too fast. What result that would give is open to interpretation. Hence my question: how do you defend against a driver who comes up too fast on the inside? What do the rules say? My view is that the rules only speak of causing an avoidable accident, not being the victim of a threatened one.

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It' not the "conundrum" it's not even relevant. Maybe Senna's move was reckless, maybe it wasn't. We never found it because Prost took him out before it became a factor. If you can't defend the move without deliberately driving into your opponent then you have clearly lost the corner. Space should be given to your opponent, of course then he should reciprocate and not run you out of road at the corner exit.

The question is - Did Prost cause the crash? Any discussion around motive is superfluous to the conversation.

I agree.

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Yes, but who's fault it is was well established, no matter the lack of punishment. I personally believe that Prost was lucky that Senna's move looked like a banzai dive bombing attempt and he didn't get penalised for turning early. They looked like both at fault. I can see why the stewards would let it slide.

But the motive is equally important. Are a racing incident/red mist/premeditated move all weighed equally? They shouldn't.

You misunderstood; I agreed with Mikey that the question is whether Prost caused the crash. I didn't say that it is well established who who's fault it was.
My view is that the driver, who chooses not to give in to yield or crash blackmail, can't necessarily be held responsible for the resulting crash.

Jo Ramirez's statement that Senna was going too fast for the corner, was new to me. And although he is critical of Prost for turning in, he doesn't add whether Prost shouldn't have turned into a team-mate's car in the interest of optimizing team result, nor how Prost should have reacted to whatever situation would have been the result of avoiding action.
I regret Ramirez didn't go deeper into it, at least not in the statement I was able to find. To me, he only gave half the explanation required.

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Maria de Villota - Jules Bianchi

I understood perfectly well that you agreed with Mikey.

Out of curiosity, who do you hold responsible for the crash then? Prost, Senna or both?

Sorry, that's just wrong. The only question really is whether we think Prost was aware that Senna was alongside. If he was, then "choosing not to yield" is just a synonym for "choosing to crash" and, if that was what happened, then Prost was 100% at fault. Choosing to maintain the racing line regardless of circumstance is not a defence.

As to the latter part, I disagree with that, too. If Ramirez was critical of Prost turning in, then by implication he felt he shouldn't have. It's fairly black and white

IMO, taking all the built-up and all the circumstance into account, Senna was calling for the crash because he did believe Prost would chicken out. The latter was what Prost desperately did not want to do - so, a crash was unavoidable. The way Prost did it, though, was clumsy, both in terms of timing and in terms of violence. No surprise here: in stark contrast to Senna, Prost lacked experience in how to crash out other drivers.
I personally think, it was a low point driving-wise in Prost's brillant career. It wasn't in Senna's; he easily "topped" it.

At the end of the day, Senna lost the wdc anyway and would have so even if he won Suzuka.

You will find the second in the book.

Ramirez agrees with those who found Senna's attempt desperate - as Hunt said straightaway. The problem remains, how to defend against it. Because Ramirez doesn't say how he thought Prost should have reacted. And this was at the chicane in its first configuration; much tighter than it is these days.[/quote]

Ramirez’s point is that had Prost not closed the door he would have come out on top because Senna would have overshot the corner and would surely have to concede any track position he might have gained.

How many times had Senna overtaken Prost in there time together at Mclaren? How many times had Senna taken out another driver before Suzuka 1989? People make it sound like it happened every other race but Senna's "move out of the way or crash" overtakes were few and far between.

Your last sentence isn't true by the way. A win for Senna with Prost finishing second would give Senna a great chance to win the championship on count back.

Part of the problem is in the expression "taken out". That's not what Senna did. He didn't "take you out", but left the choice of whether to let him through or have an accident, on his victim. He would not hold back, that was up to the other driver. Racing etiquette was discarded, so it is all the more surprising to read about it in his own book on motor racing.

I believe Paolo refers to the outcome of the following race at Adelaide, where Senna ran into the back of another car, and failed to finish - let alone win.
But the circumstances of that race were already different to what they would have been had his Suzuka "win" been allowed to stand, because the WMSC had already convened and punished him. He needed to win both events to win the championship.

I don't know by heart how many accidents Senna had been involved in, but Jackie Stewart referred to them in his interview. I agree he didn't have accidents every other race, but you must remember that most other drivers also needed to finish their races. An accident is no option for a driver who needs a result. And in today's parlance, not all of them were racing Senna. Prost was, and Senna knew what he could expect if he took the risk of going up the inside too fast.

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Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

Maria de Villota - Jules Bianchi

Would you care to offer a few examples of these overtakes from Senna pre 1989. You talk about it enough. You must know of some.

I'm not saying it never happened just nothing like as often as people perpetrate. He certainly didn't overtake Prost enough in that manor at Mclaren to justify Prost's attitude.

If we have to talk about motive then I would suggest that the fact 2nd places were next to worthless to Prost as a bigger motive than any past history of poor driving on Senna's part.

You're right, from the driver's viewpoint at that point in time. I'm a little rusty on the 1989 scoring system, but essentially heading into Japan Prost had scored 81 points (dropping a 4th and 5th, resulting in 76 kept) while Senna had 60 (dropping no results). Prost was scoring 4 wins, 6 second places and 1 third place; Senna was scoring 6 wins and 1 second place. A win from Senna with Prost finishing second would have given Prost 2 extra points for swapping his third for a second, and given Senna 9 extra points. That would have left the championship balanced at 78 - 69, with Senna knowing that a win in Australia would give him the title.

However, in actual fact Senna crashed in Australia and scored 0 points, so he was never going to win the title. And I can't see him driving any differently in that GP if he had still been in contention, so I don't think anything would have changed. The only thing that probably would have been different is that Prost probably wouldn't have retired on lap one in protest.

Senna was already driving to win that GP; he hoped that his disqualification from Japan would be overturned, and a win could give him the title anyway. He was driving exactly the way he would have been if he needed that win to take home the title, so I think it's fair to assume it would have happened even if he had kept the win in Japan.

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Any minuscule difference would have changed the outcome and with the championship still alive Prost would have raced. all it would take would be for Senna to not come across that car at that exact time and the crash doesn't happen. Of course a different one may happen or any number of infinite possibilities. The exact same thing happening would be incredibly unlikely.

The salient point is that if Senna wins in Suzuka with Prost second then it's basically winner takes all in Adelaide.

The second error that Ramirez refers to, is irrelevant to this discussion. Prost got out too quickly, without making sure his car was really damaged. As I understand it, the only real damage to either car was Senna's front wing. It might be fun to imagine what would have happened had both cars resumed the race, but both engines would have had to be restarted through outside assistance, which was not allowed - at least not in the way Senna did. An additional problem would have been who to bump start first.

I don't know exactly when race control started to call on drivers to give a position back, that was won incorrectly, but I do know it wasn't done in those days.

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Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

Maria de Villota - Jules Bianchi

Why pre-1989? The relationship between Senna and Prost deteriorated mostly during that season, although squeezing Prost at Estoril in late 1988 is generally seen as the start of the breakdown. I don't have all the races from that era to review. I talk about it enough? Senna's racing style wasn't exactly a secret, well before Suzuka.

Prost's statement that he expected Senna's attack later in the race made sense; Senna could not risk an accident that would result in a DNF for him, while that would automatically mean making Prost world champion. So why he chose to attack too fast, with a number of laps left to try again, is a bit of a mystery. One explanation would be that he expected Prost to avoid a coming together. Leaving that choice up to Prost was not smart.

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Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

Maria de Villota - Jules Bianchi

Apologies. I meant up to Suzuka 1989.

How could Senna pass Prost on track without giving Prost the opportunity to turn into him? When one car goes past the other it will always give a chance to either driver to take out the other.

So it was ok back then to just forego a chicane and overtake someone? I highly doubt that. He would have been disciplined or forced to give the place back. Heck, he did lose the race win because he actually didn't go through the chicane, so if he overtook and did that it would not have been accepted.

Senna crashed out of the final race, so he lost the wdc anyway.

Senna was involved in lots of controversial collisions and manoeuvres with virtually every other top driver - really, that is hardly an ambitious statemenþ.

Lots before Suzuka 1989? Care to offer examples?

I didn't say it was deemed ok to forego a chicane and benefit from it. I do recall however that stewarding was considered as fickle as it appears these days. Also, how would you have made Senna give a place back, when nothing he ever did seemed to be wrong to him? (That's not just me talking, as you can find in all the articles looking back on his career.
It took quite a long time for the stewards to reach a verdict, and most observers were surprised when the only reason mentioned was cutting the chicane.

Did you ever see Senna's overtake on Brundle in F3? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIr1EJa7TP0

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Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

Maria de Villota - Jules Bianchi

All observers were astonished when cutting the chicane was given as the reason for DSQ. If they felt they could pin worse on Senna why did they DSQ for something that never usually resulted in any punishment?

Well, it was a correct reason, and I'm not sure whether cutting a chicane wasn't punished before. I would really like to read the original documents from that race and the WMSC meeting judging the appeal. With a copy of the then current rules, obviously.

What I do know is that a few years later, Prost was punished for taking avoiding action in a chicane, and not completing it as required. So damned if he did avoid, and damned if he didn't.

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Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

Maria de Villota - Jules Bianchi

I watched this live in 1989, and dozens of times since. I recall that Senna received a push start after stalling the car. The rules at the time specifically prohibited being pushed to restart the engine. (And both cars came to rest off the racing line.) At the time, I thought this alone was enough to DQ Senna. That he did not resume on the course but took the escape road was immaterial to me.

By today's standards and rules, Senna would have also run afoul of the stewards, because he clearly caused an accident (both '89 and '90), and took a "four wheels off" position to create a lasting advantage. Not to mention that the same outside assistance rules for a stalled engine still apply today.

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Senna didn't get DSQ'd for receiving outside assistance. If that was not allowed at the time he would have done. Considering Vettel didn't get a DSQ for a deliberate crash I hardly see Senna getting one even if the stewards made an error and decided he was at fault. How many times have drivers been DSQ'd in modern day for gaining an advantage by going off track. They rarely get punished. Generally it's always ignored if a driver is recovering from an accident. See Webber at Spa a few years ago or Vettel in Mexico recovering from a puncture.

So I'm sorry but I think you are wrong on all counts. It's become fashionable to jump on Senna. Whilst he deserves harsh criticism for Suzuka 1990 and a few (and it is a few) bad overtakes, his quantity of his crimes has been exaggerated.

I've never understood why Prost almost gets a free pass for 1989 whilst Senna gets hammered for 1990.

Ah, that's because Prost did nothing wrong in both years. Senna caused the accidents both times. Not just my opinion. ALL, and I mean ALL the commentators at the time faulted Senna. Revisionist historians since have varied in opinion. Doesn't shake my opinion at all.

I guess we will just have to disagree.

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I don't think that's true. Even Prost said "I know everybody thinks I did it on purpose..." in an interview after the race, and I don't see why he'd say that if everyone thought he was innocent, or indeed id everybody was saying he was the victim

Why did Prost turn too early to make the corner if not to hit Senna? Do you think he made a mistake ? If you have a car next to you and steer into them then I fail to see how you cannot be at fault.

That argument only works if the stewards are faultless, and they clearly are not. I believe restarting the car with outside assistance has always been illegal, they just disqualified him for a much worse reason.


While I agree that it's strange for Prost to get a completely free pass for 1989, it is by no means the same as what Senna did in 1990, and Senna deserves to get hammered for it. It was probably the single most intentionally dangerous move in F1 history, and to this day I think he should have been banned from F1 for doing it. It was every bit as deliberate as Baku, but it was delivered at far higher speed and in much more unsafe cars.

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I agree.

Senna's move in 1990 was far worse.

The stewards used such an obscure reason to DSQ Senna do you honestly believe they wouldn't have used a better one if they could.

I really think F1 stewards are deeply incompetent, but it's true that you have to wonder why they picked cutting the chicane as the reason. Unfortunately, I don't have access to a copy of the 1989 regulations, but I do have the current ones PDF'd to my computer.


Under the current rules then, they could easily disqualify him for what happened. I don't know if that clause was in the sporting regulations circa 1989, however.

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